Chapter 202 - Black Dragon (1)

1

We headed into the heart of the Dream World.

"Ahahaha! Come, attend your empress!"

Behind us, the succubus imitating Golden Silk Blossom was still cracking her whip, but we made a point of ignoring her and walked on. None of us wanted anything to do with that.

After we had walked for a while, a bizarre landscape greeted us. For a start, there was something strange about the sky overhead.

"The moon... has an eye, my liege."

"So it does."

A blink.

The moon closed its eyelid, then opened it again. Just as Hungry Ghost had said, the full moon had an eye. Its iris was red. The red moon blinked down at us.

"It's a little grotesque, but the eye is beautiful. I keep wanting to look up at it."

For some reason, it even made my heart race.

Hungry Ghost's expression grew peculiar at my reaction.

"Er, um. I believe your subconscious has influenced it, my liege. Perhaps it is imitating your wife's eyes..."

"Huh? Is it?"

Looking again, it did resemble Raviel's eye.

Stealing my heart with nothing but an eye. That was my duchess for you. From head to toe, not a single hair of hers was anything less than captivating.

The next place we reached had sprung from Hungry Ghost.

"Hmm."

Beneath the red eye-moon stretched fields of golden wheat. Farmers worked bent over between the stalks of grain.

"..."

Hungry Ghost's face visibly hardened. I immediately recognized the place being imitated.

"Estelle's village."

"... Yes, my liege."

It was the village that the Aegim Empire and the allied forces had razed. The children I had once seen in Hungry Ghost's trauma were playing in the wheat fields.

"Spirit! Spirit!"

Something lay among the golden, ripened wheat.

An enormous beast.

A wolf with blue fur opened its half-lidded eyes and watched the children approach.

"Here's a present!"

"We picked only the prettiest flowers to make it!"

The village children draped a bouquet over the wolf. But its head was too big for the bouquet to fit. After a moment of bewilderment, they decided to make do and hung it from the wolf's ear instead. Just like that, the wolf had acquired a floral earring.

GRRR.

Seemingly pleased, the wolf let the children ride on its back.

The wind caressed the wheat fields, and the children's laughter rippled through them.

The laughter carried on the wind was called happiness.

"That beast is..."

"A fantasy of mine."

Hungry Ghost murmured.

"What if I had not devoured Estelle? What if I had remained a beast instead of becoming human...? That is the possibility it depicts. Then I would never have become Estelle and been revered as a saintess, nor condemned as a witch. The village would never have burned to ashes, either."

Her tone was calm.

"How foolish."

She quietly gripped her sword hilt.

"Had I not swallowed a human, I could never have fathomed a human heart. My kind understands only what we have digested as prey, and only after digesting it. If I had not eaten Estelle, I would never even have wished to live among humans like that. The scene before us is a wish riddled with contradictions."

Hungry Ghost approached the wheat field. The wolf carrying the children stopped.

A silent confrontation.

The doppelganger looked up at her own imitation with cold eyes.

"Sever."

Then she drew her sword and cleaved the wolf in two. The moment Hungry Ghost's blade cut it, the wolf melted into pink paint. The children laughing on its back, the farmers working in the fields, and the village they lived in all melted away in an instant.

"... Whew."

Only Hungry Ghost remained beneath the red moon. She slowly turned to look at me.

"Let us continue, my liege."

"... You're decisive. Still, that must have been a picture of your happiness."

"Forgive my presumption, but the life I have lived is not so trifling that I would throw it away for a contradictory delusion. The memory of drinking Estelle's blood and swallowing the child's flesh remains vivid in my mind. How could I pretend it never happened, even in a dream?"

I nodded.

"Yes. You're right."

We hurried on again.

Along the way, we encountered the cult members' dreams and Uburka's dream. The Uburka of the Dream World had me pinned beneath him and was roaring with laughter, shouting, "Ugor! Ugor!" Since Uburka was also in contact with the dream demons, his subconscious seemed to have been reflected here.

"Is this world's core still far away?"

"No. We are nearly there."

Hungry Ghost kicked Uburka aside and pointed into the distance.

"I sense a presence there rivaling a constellation's."

There was an old barbed-wire fence there. A dream demon sat before the ramshackle fencing. As we approached, it tilted its head with a "Huh."

"You really are keeping your sanity here. How fascinating."

The succubus wore a familiar face. It was much smaller and more delicate than the one I knew, but I realized whom she was imitating.

"Black Dragon leader?"

"Yes. That's what you call this human."

Was she about seven or eight?

The Black Dragon leader, far younger than she was now, got to her feet with a little heave.

"We have no faces of our own. We have to borrow another animal's form somehow to hold a conversation. This child was about the only person you cherish who could still speak to you dispassionately."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean she doesn't get swept up in emotion easily. Simple, isn't it?"

The dream demon glanced over my shoulder. Yoo Suha, Hungry Ghost, Golden Silk Blossom, the Four Demon Lords, and the cult members were following me.

"So many guests, and not a single tea table to entertain them at. Sorry. But do try to understand our circumstances. Why bring such a horde of soldiers to this shabby place, where there's nothing even worth plundering?"

"You're the ones doing the plundering, not us. Aren't you? You're crossing the sea to invade."

"Wild beasts gathering at the smell of blood is simply nature taking its course."

"By that reasoning, the strong beating the crap out of the weak is also nature taking its course. So I'd appreciate it if you'd shut up and do as I say."

"How frightening."

"Want me to make it more frightening?"

I took a step, leaving my companions behind as I approached the dream demon.

"You seem to be looking down on us because physical force doesn't work very well here..."

"Hmm. And if I am?"

"If we can't talk this out, I'll have no choice but to take drastic measures of my own."

"How intriguing."

The young succubus smiled.

"I'd be grateful if you told me what those measures are."

"I have a skill that resurrects the dead. I'll kill every last one of you and bring you back."

I summoned the [Rebirth of a Hundred Ghosts] card. The golden card glittered in my hand.

"Anyone who dies by my hand obeys my commands once resurrected. Bringing your race of dream demons under my control would be child's play."

"..."

"Think I'm bluffing?"

From right in front of her, I stared into the succubus's eyes.

I had already wiped out [The Immortal Evangelist of Happiness] once. At least for me, there was no reason I couldn't do the same thing twice.

The smile vanished from the dream demon's lips.

"... No, I don't doubt your sincerity. You're a frightening person, Death King."

The succubus shook her head as she gazed into my eyes.

"I merely find it sad."

"Sad? What is?"

"To be precise, it's not our emotion, but that of the animal this body is modeled after. In the end, your way of persuading us is the logic of force, too."

It happened then.

Gunshots rang out from beyond the fence.

"My liege!"

"Young Cult Leader!"

Hungry Ghost and the Four Demon Lords instantly surrounded me. But nothing had happened to me. Neither Hungry Ghost nor the Four Demon Lords seemed injured, either.

The succubus giggled at our reaction.

"Don't worry. In your terms, this is a fantasy, too."

Gunfire continued to echo beyond the fence and barbed wire. Looking toward the shots, I saw a man running desperately toward us with a small child in his arms.

As though someone were chasing him.

"How deeply a single moment's experience can scar you. The more I learn, the more astonishing it is."

The man kept looking back. But he shielded the child, seemingly determined never to let her see what was behind them. The man with the bushy beard whispered to her.

"Don't look back, no matter what. Understand?"

"Yes."

Only after hearing the child's voice did I realize it.

This was the Black Dragon leader's childhood.

Both the man's and the child's clothes were filthy, as though they had not washed in a long time. Mud had dried hard on their trouser legs. Dragging their heavy feet onward, the man and child fled.

["I was seven."]

I recalled the story the Black Dragon leader had told me long ago.

["My father died in a civil war when I was in the outside world."]

There was one exceedingly narrow gate in the fence. The man shoved the child through it first.

The gunfire drew ever closer.

["I was fleeing with my parents, and I think soldiers were chasing us. My father stayed behind."]

Caught in the iron gate, the child screamed.

"Daddy! Daddy..."

"Don't look back! Go on ahead! I'll follow you!"

The man forced the child through to the other side of the fence. Still screaming, she nevertheless moved her feet as her father had told her.

["I really did run without looking back."]

After that, the man no longer appeared in the Black Dragon leader's memory.

Only at the very end, behind the young Black Dragon leader, came the sound of something falling to the ground.

THUD!

With that sound, the scene at the fence ended.

"..."

I could guess what the sound had been. After sending the child through, the man would have tried to climb over the fence. He would have scaled it like a tree. Then a bullet had killed him instantly, and he had fallen to the ground.

That was probably the story behind the last sound the Black Dragon leader remembered.

"No matter how strong you are, you can't undo the irreversible."

The succubus spoke calmly.

"So preventing disaster before it happens is the best course. You must prepare and remain on guard endlessly. That's how the original of this body thinks. Whenever she meets someone, she imagines their death first. How pitiful."

"I know that without you telling me."

"Oh? Then do you also know that this original has thwarted eight attempts to kidnap or assassinate you so far?"

"... What?"

Startled, I turned to the dream demon.

"You've grown at an extraordinary pace. It wouldn't be strange for certain groups to take an unsavory interest in that. The original has smashed and eradicated as many as she could, but spies sent by various countries in the outside world still remain in the Tower."

"..."

"Without power, you can't even protect the lives of those beside you."

RUMBLE.

The moon hanging in the Dream World's sky split apart. The red moon shattered into fragments and fell toward the horizon.

"Death King. Since you possess power, I'll bow my head for now. I'll order the kin we sent across the sea to return. But even you can't stay on the continent forever and look after the seven races, can you?"

The ground softened, then turned into a pink sea.

SPLASH, SPLASH.

The falling fragments of the shattered moon plunged into the pink water.

"You've only subdued us temporarily. You haven't truly persuaded us. That's how coercion by force works, in the end."

A tidal wave rose from the sea where the moon had fallen. Just as the water towering into the sky was about to engulf us, the succubus's form melted away, too.

"See you next time, Death King."

And the Dream World collapsed.

2

"Death King? Are you all right, Junior?"

I snapped back to my senses. The Black Dragon leader was looking down at me with concern.

"Senior?"

"Thank goodness. The light's back in your eyes."

I looked around. This was not the jungle landscape that had unfolded in Uburka's dream. My body was lying in the harbor village's square.

"The dream demons..."

"Right after you spoke to the stag, we were suddenly thrown out of the dream. What happened? Did you succeed in persuading them or not?"

"For now, I succeeded."

As though proving my words, the villagers lying in the square began to get up one by one. Their movements were sluggish, perhaps because they had spent so long dreaming, but fortunately their lives did not seem to be in danger.

"Haaa..."

The Black Dragon leader let out a deep sigh. At last, her expression relaxed with relief.

"Well done. I can hear what happened in a little while..."

"Senior."

I caught her wrist. She tilted her head and turned to look at me.

"There's something I need to tell you."

"... What is it? Why do you suddenly look so serious?"

"Because it's something serious."

A strange silence passed between us. I steadied my breathing. Then, looking straight into the Black Dragon leader's eyes, I spoke.

"Senior, I am a regressor."